Many work benches have been designed to assist the professional or hobbyist in the wood working arts. Benches that transform into sawhorses, benches having general purpose clamping means, and many different special purpose benches are well known.
French patent 2,561,970 shows a bench having a plurality of holes formed in the top thereof for receiving screws positioned on opposite ends of boards; an article to be held is placed into overlying relation to the bench top, a board of the type just described is placed into overlying relation to said article, and the screws are advanced into the bench top holes to sandwich the article between the bench top and the board.
The French bench thus enables facile clamping of articles, but its construction does not permit a wide variety of wood working operations to take place. For example, routing requires that the article being routed be held in spaced relation above the bench top. The French design includes no means for tightly clamping an article above the bench top; more importantly, the French design includes no teachings or suggestions as to how an article could be held above the plane of the bench top.
The prior art, when considered as a whole in accordance with the requirements of law, neither teaches nor suggests to those of ordinary skill in this art how the French design could be improved.